Languages and dialects

Standard Thai, also known as Central Thai or Siamese, is the official language of Thailand, spoken by about 65 million people (1990) including speakers of Bangkok Thai (although the latter is sometimes considered as a separate dialect). Khorat Thai is spoken by about 400,000 (1984) in Nakhon Ratchasima; it occupies a linguistic position somewhere between Central Thai and the Isan on a dialect continuum, and may be considered a variant or dialect of either. A majority of the people in the Isan region of Thailand speak a dialect of the Lao language, which has influenced the Central Thai dialect.[citation needed]

In addition to Standard Thai, Thailand is home to other related Tai languages, including:

Isan (Northeastern Thai), the language of the Isan region of Thailand, a socio-culturally distinct Thai-Lao hybrid dialect which is written with the Thai alphabet. It is spoken by about 15 million people (1983).

Many of these languages are spoken by larger numbers outside of Thailand.[citation needed] Most speakers of dialects and minority languages speak Central Thai as well, since it is the language used in schools and universities all across the kingdom.

Standard Thai is composed of several distinct registers, forms for different social contexts:

Street Thai (ภาษาพูด, spoken Thai): informal, without polite terms of address, as used between close relatives and friends.

Elegant Thai (ภาษาเขียน, written Thai): official and written version, includes respectful terms of address; used in simplified form in newspapers.

Rhetorical Thai: used for public speaking.

Religious Thai: (heavily influenced by Sanskrit and Pāli) used when discussing Buddhism or addressing monks.

Royal Thai (ราชาศัพท์): (influenced by Khmer) used when addressing members of the royal family or describing their activities.

Most of the Thais can speak and understand all of these contexts. Street and Elegant are the basis of all conversations;[citation needed] rhetorical, religious and royal Thai are taught in schools as the national curriculum.

Script

Many scholars believe that the Thai script is derived from the Khmer script, which is modeled after the Brahmic script from the Indic family. However, in appearance, Thai is closer to Thai Dam script, which may have the same Indian origins as Khmer script. The language and its script[citation needed] are closely related to the Lao language and script. Most literate Lao are able to read and understand Thai, as more than half of the Thai vocabulary, grammar, intonation, vowels and so forth are common with the Lao language. Much like the Burmese adopted the Mon script (which also has Indic origins), the Thais adopted and modified the Khmer script to create their own writing system. While the oldest known inscription in the Khmer language dates from 611 CE, inscriptions in Thai writing began to appear around 1292 CE. Notable features include:

It is an abugida script, in which the implicit vowel is a short /a/ in a syllable without final consonant and a short /o/ in a syllable with final consonant.

Tone markers are placed above the consonant just before the vowel sound of the syllable.

Vowels sounding after a consonant are nonsequential: they can be located before, after, above or below the consonant, or in a combination of these positions.

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Transcription

There is no universal standard for transcribing Thai into the Latin alphabet. For example, the name of King Rama IX, the present monarch, is transcribed variously as Bhumibol, Phumiphon, phuuM miH phohnM, or many other versions. Guide books, text books and dictionaries may each follow different systems. For this reason, most language courses recommend that learners master the Thai script.

What comes closest to a standard is the Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS), published by the Thai Royal Institute.[3] This system is increasingly used in Thailand by central and local governments,[citation needed] especially for road signs. Its main drawbacks are that it does not indicate tone or vowel length. Retro-transliteration, that is, reconstruction of Thai spelling from RTGS romanisation, is not possible.

Transliteration

The ISO published an international standard for the transliteration of Thai into Roman script in September 2003 (ISO 11940) [2]. By adding diacritics to the Latin letters, it makes the transcription reversible, making it a true transliteration. This system is intended for academic use, but is rarely used in any context.

Adjectives and adverbs

There is no morphological distinction between adverbs and adjectives. Many words can be used in either function. They follow the word they modify, which may be a noun, verb, or another adjective or adverb. Intensity can be expressed by a duplicated word, which is used to mean "very" (with the first occurrence at a higher pitch) or "rather" (with both at the same pitch) (Higbie 187-188). Usually, only one word is duplicated per clause.

Comparatives take the form "A X กว่า B" (kwa, IPA: [kwaː]), A is more X than B. The superlative is expressed as "A X ที่สุด" (thi sut, IPA: [tʰiːsut]), A is most X.

เขาอ้วนกว่าฉัน (khao uan kwa chan) S/he is fatter than me.

เขาอ้วนที่สุด (khao uan thi sut) S/he is the fattest (of all).

Because adjectives can be used as complete predicates, many words used to indicate tense in verbs (see Verbs:Tense below) may be used to describe adjectives.

ฉันหิว (chan hiu) I am hungry.

ฉันจะหิว (chan cha hiu) I will be hungry.

ฉันกำลังหิว (chan kamlang hiu) I am hungry right now.

ฉันหิวแล้ว (chan hiu laeo) I am already hungry.

Remark ฉันหิวแล้ว mostly means "I am hungry right now" because normally, แล้ว (laeo) is a past-tense marker, but แล้ว has many other uses as well. For example, in the sentence, แล้วเธอจะไปไหน (laeo thoe cha pai nai): So where are you going?, แล้ว (laeo) is used as a discourse particle.

Verbs

Verbs do not inflect (i.e. do not change with person, tense, voice, mood, or number) nor are there any participles. Duplication conveys the idea of doing the verb intensively.

The passive voice is indicated by the insertion of ถูก (thuk, IPA: [tʰuːk])) before the verb. For example:

เขาถูกตี (khao thuk ti, IPA: [kʰǎw tʰuːk tiː]), He is hit. This describes an action that is out of the receiver's control and, thus, conveys suffering.

To convey the opposite sense, a sense of having an opportunity arrive, ได้ (dai, IPA: [daj], can) is used. For example:

Note, dai (IPA: [daj] and IPA: [daːj]), though both spelled ได้ , convey two separate meanings. The short vowel dai (IPA: [daj]) conveys an opportunity has arisen and is placed before the verb. The long vowel dai (IPA: [daːj]) is placed after the verb and conveys the idea that one has been given permission or one has the ability to do something. Also see the past tense below.

เขาตีได้ (khao ti dai, IPA: [kʰǎw tiː dâːj]), He is/was allowed to hit or He is/was able to hit

Future can be indicated by จะ (cha, IPA: [tɕaʔ], will) before the verb or by a time expression indicating the future. For example:

เขาจะวิ่ง (khao cha wing, IPA: [kʰǎw tɕaʔ wiŋ]), He will run or He is going to run

Past can be indicated by ได้ (dai, IPA: [daːj]) before the verb or by a time expression indicating the past. However, แล้ว (laeo, :IPA: [lɛːw], already) is more often used to indicate the past tense by being placed behind the verb. Or, both ได้ and แล้ว are put together to form the past tense expression, i.e. Subject + ได้ + Verb + แล้ว. For example:

Nouns and pronouns

Nouns are neither singular nor plural. Some specific nouns are reduplicated to form collectives: เด็ก (dek, child) is often repeated as เด็กๆ (dek dek) to refer to a group of children. The word พวก (phuak, [pʰûak]) may be used as a prefix of a noun or pronoun as a collective to pluralize or emphasise the following word. (พวกผม, phuak phom, [pʰûak pʰǒm], we, masculine; พวกเรา phuak rao, [pʰûak raw], emphasised we; พวกหมา phuak ma, (the) dogs) Plurals are expressed by adding classifiers, used as measure words (ลักษณนาม), in the form of noun-number-classifier (ครูห้าคน, "teacher five person" for "five teachers"). While in English, such classifiers are usually absent ("four chairs") or optional ("two bottles of beer" or "two beers"), a classifier is almost always used in Thai (hence "chair four item" and "beer two bottle").

Subject pronouns are often omitted, while nicknames are often used where English would use a pronoun. There are specialised pronouns in the royal and sacred Thai languages. The following are appropriate for conversational use:

older brother, sister (also often used loosely for older cousins and non-relatives)

น้อง

nong

[nɔːŋ]

younger brother, sister (also often used loosely for younger cousins and non-relatives)

ลูกพี่ ลูกน้อง

luk phi luk nong

[luːk pʰiː luːk nɔːŋ]

cousin (male or female)

The reflexive pronoun is ตัวเอง (tua eng), which can mean any of: myself, yourself, ourselves, himself, herself, themselves. This can be mixed with another pronoun to create an intensive pronoun, such as ตัวผมเอง (tua phom eng, lit: I myself) or ตัวคุณเอง (tua khun eng, lit: you yourself).

Thai does not have a separate possessive pronoun. Instead, possession is indicated by the particle ของ (khong). For example, "my mother" is แม่ของผม (mae khong phom, lit: mother of I). This particle is often implicit, so the phrase is shortened to แม่ผม (mae phom).

Above is only a short list. Thai language has many more pronouns. Their usage is full of nuances. For example:

เรา (rao) can be first person (I), second person (you), or both (we), depending on the context.

When speaking to someone older, หนู (nu) is a feminine first person (I). However, when speaking to someone younger, the same word หนู is a neuter second person (you).

The second person pronoun เธอ (thoe) (lit: you) is semi-feminine. It is used only when the speaker or the listener (or both) are female. Males usually don't address each other by this pronoun.

Both คุณ (khun) and เธอ (thoe) are polite neuter second person pronouns. However, คุณเธอ (khun thoe) is a feminine derogative third person.

Instead of a second person pronoun such as "คุณ" (you), it's much more common for unrelated strangers to call each other "พี่ น้อง ลุง ป้า น้า อา ตา ยาย" (brother/sister/aunt/uncle/granny).

To express deference, the second person pronoun is sometimes replaced by a profession, similar to how, in English, presiding judges are always addressed as "your honor" rather than "you". In Thai, students always address their teachers by "ครู คุณครู อาจารย์" (each means teacher) rather than คุณ (you). Teachers, monks, and doctors are almost always addressed this way.

Particles

The particles are often untranslatable words added to the end of a sentence to indicate respect, a request, encouragement or other moods (similar to the use of intonation in English), as well as varying the level of formality. They are not used in elegant (written) Thai. The most common particles indicating respect are ครับ (khrap, IPA: [kʰráp], with a high tone) for a man, and ค่ะ (kha, [kʰâ], with a falling tone) for a woman; these can also be used to indicate an affirmative, though the ค่ะ (falling tone) is changed to a คะ (high tone).

Phonology

Tones

There are five phonemic tones: middle, low, falling, high and rising, sometimes referred to in older reference works as rectus, circumflexus, gravis, altus and demissus, respectively.[4] The table shows an example of both the phonemic tones and their phonetic realization, in the IPA.

Tone

Thai

Example

Phonemic

Phonetic

Example meaning in English

mid

สามัญ

นา

/nāː/

[naː˥˧]

a paddy

low

เอก

หน่า

/nàː/

[naː˧˩]

(a nickname)

falling

โท

หน้า

/nâː/

[naː˥˩]

face

high

ตรี

น้า

/náː/

[naː˧˥]

aunt/uncle (younger than one's parents)

rising

จัตวา

หนา

/nǎː/

[naː˨˩˧]

thick

Consonants

Thai distinguishes among three voice/aspiration patterns for plosive consonants:

unvoiced, unaspirated

unvoiced, aspirated

voiced, unaspirated

Where English has only a distinction between the voiced, unaspirated /b/ and the unvoiced, aspirated /p/, Thai distinguishes a third sound which is neither voiced nor aspirated, which occurs in English only as an allophone of /p/, approximately the sound of the p in "spin". There is similarly an alveolar /t/, /tʰ/, /d/ triplet. In the velar series there is a /k/, /kʰ/ pair and in the postalveolar series the /tɕ/, /tɕʰ/ pair.

In each cell below, the first line indicates International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the second indicates the Thai characters in initial position (more letters appearing in the same box have identical pronunciation).

* At the end of a syllable บ and ด are devoiced, becoming pronounced as [p] and [t] respectively

** The glottal plosive is implied after a short vowel without final, or the silent อ before a vowel.

Vowels

The basic vowels of the Thai language, from front to back and close to open, are given in the following table. The top entry in every cell is the symbol from the International Phonetic Alphabet, the second entry gives the spelling in the Thai alphabet, where a dash (–) indicates the position of the initial consonant after which the vowel is pronounced. A second dash indicates that a final consonant must follow.

The vowels each exist in long-short pairs: these are distinct phonemes forming unrelated words in Thai,[5] but usually transliterated the same: เขา (khao) means he or she, while ขาว (khao) means white.

The basic vowels can be combined into diphthongs. Tingsabadh & Abramson (1993) analyze those ending in high vocoids as underlyingly /Vj/ and /Vw/. For purposes of determining tone, those marked with an asterisk are also classified as long:

Vocabulary

Other than compound words and words of foreign origin, most words are monosyllabic. Historically, words have most often been borrowed from Sanskrit and Pāli; Buddhist terminology is particularly indebted to these. Old Khmer has also contributed its share, especially in regard to royal court terminology. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, the English language has had the greatest influence. Many Teochew Chinese words are also used, some replacing existing Thai words.[citation needed]